Will *any* mobile OS emerge dominant by 2015?

In a forum dedicated exclusively to arguing platform bias, I am one of the few honest people here. Just because you throw out a limp bone of objectivity once and again in an attempt to throw off the tracks of the "you're bias" hounds doesn't necessarily mean you're being honest to yourself. You post here for a reason. If it was kumbaya you wanted you wouldn't be posting here.

Not sure who "you" is referring to, but naturally people are biased here. The difference they don't let their bias actually cloud their judgment to posting things that are so glaringly wrong as you do.

What's interesting about the German Gizmodo blogger is that he brushes off, or ignores altogether, the features that make using iOS and OS X indespensible to mine, and my partner's, life: shared Reminders, persistent iTunes library through Match, AirPlay, easily shared app, TV, and movie purchases, iMessage, shared Photostreams, and much more that makes the iOS/ OSX partnership compelling.

Thankfully, I don't think Nintendo is like a typical US/multinational company (unlike Sony). If they were, their board of directors might be thinking, "oh no! we're not making Apple-level profits! What can we do to make Apple-level profits? I know! Let's get into the smartphone business!"

But that would be retarded.

Nintendo also has a unique corporate culture. That's helped it make profit even in 3rd place like the GameCube era. It also makes it very difficult for Nintendo to acquire or be acquired as an expansion strategy should their core business falter badly.

I think that's the reason HP went so far downhill after the Compaq merger. HP was an atypical corporate culture and Compaq was too big of a merger.

In a forum dedicated exclusively to arguing platform bias, I am one of the few honest people here. Just because you throw out a limp bone of objectivity once and again in an attempt to throw off the tracks of the "you're bias" hounds doesn't necessarily mean you're being honest to yourself. You post here for a reason. If it was kumbaya you wanted you wouldn't be posting here.

Not sure who "you" is referring to, but naturally people are biased here. The difference they don't let their bias actually cloud their judgment to posting things that are so glaringly wrong as you do.

What's interesting about the German Gizmodo blogger is that he brushes off, or ignores altogether, the features that make using iOS and OS X indespensible to mine, and my partner's, life: shared Reminders, persistent iTunes library through Match, AirPlay, easily shared app, TV, and movie purchases, iMessage, shared Photostreams, and much more that makes the iOS/ OSX partnership compelling.

He did mention iMessages. But aren't some of those other things available on Android?

Thankfully, I don't think Nintendo is like a typical US/multinational company (unlike Sony). If they were, their board of directors might be thinking, "oh no! we're not making Apple-level profits! What can we do to make Apple-level profits? I know! Let's get into the smartphone business!"

But that would be retarded.

Nintendo also has a unique corporate culture. That's helped it make profit even in 3rd place like the GameCube era. It also makes it very difficult for Nintendo to acquire or be acquired as an expansion strategy should their core business falter badly.

I think that's the reason HP went so far downhill after the Compaq merger. HP was an atypical corporate culture and Compaq was too big of a merger.

Well...When they had that 3rd place GC--they had a first-place by a long shot dominant nothing close to it handheld system.

@ZZ: Nintendo doesn't need to be #3, they can comfortably survive at #6 selling 24m phones a year; after all they do fine selling 12m DS in a year. It's the games that make them rich, the consoles just let them make unique games.

So, a smartphone as. . . a game platform? I'll believe that one when I see it.

The fact is, none of the non-Sammy players are big enough in terms of volume and product mix to make money on the hardware right now. Nintendo would be playing a very dangerous game if they weren't going to make money on the hardware.

I don't see how they do it at #6 when no one else is making it.

What seems to be needed are larger players, not smaller ones.

Right now, the smartphone business is a variation on an old joke: How do you make a small fortune? Start with a large one and go into the smart phone hardware business.

Why in the world do they want to enter a business that is consolidating anyway?

I think a Nintendo smartphone strategy could work and would rest on the following assumptions:

1) There is a significant group of people, say 50 million around the world, who like Nintendo and their games, but haven't bought the 3DS because their smartphones are now good enough for gaming. Seems plausible to me. For example people who purchased a DS but not a 3DS.2) These people would be open to buying a high-end Android smartphone with a game pad (like the Xperia Play) from Nintendo. This would be on par with other top smartphone for most things (apart from the extra bulk) but would offer a significantly better gaming experience. Again seems plausible. The Xperia Play was not a bad effort and today you could have much better hardware.3) Nintendo would make high-quality Nintendo exclusives only for this phone which would only work well with the physical controls. They would be full-fledged games and would cost $20-30. I think there would be a market for such games which would offer a much better experience than current mobile games.

The advantage of this strategy is that it allows Nintendo to craft a unique gaming experience with physical controls on the smartphone which would allow them to continue charging a premium for their exclusives. If they just makes regular games for iOS/Android they could become commoditized in the already crowded app stores. If the strategy works there is probably also some decent profits to be made from the phone hardware also.

That would be an exceptional amount of loyalty and an exceptional amount of people buying a particular, Nintendo-centric argument.

Some of these folks already have an iPhone or an Android. Why do they switch to the Nintendo version again? For a handful of games? So they could pay more? That's not an easy argument.

I agree that one's pocket, purse, or belt clip is a finite resource, but that does not automatically make people think "my phone had better be a regular phone but also a bang up hand held game offering".

That's the point. The 25 million was mine based on someone else's 50 million.

The exact number isn't the issue here, OC. The issue is that nothing like the entire Nintendo customer base is likely to buy this thing. The "leverage" of the existing brands and products appears to be incredibly weak.

Maybe you can persuade people to have a phone with these added manual controls, but you have a whole touch sensitive screen now and that seems to be what people prefer.

This looks to me exactly the kind of problem that plagues large, established companies. They solve "their own" problems and not their customers' problems, but think they are solving customers' problems.

Sure, Nintendo would like a whole lotta consumers to buy a phone with a couple of lousy buttons on it (that they show no current evidence of needing) so they can maybe overcharge for the phone and certainly overcharge for the games.

That would be great for Nintendo if it could be done. But, why should the consumers calmly sit by and agree to getting fleeced like that? For the "experience" of going back to buttons? And then paying 25 to 50 bucks a game instead of a couple of bucks or nothing? And be cut off from the general app market in the bargain (otherwise, the premium game market collapses)?

Maybe all that can be done, but it's not an obvious slam-dunk for consumers. It does appear to be working in the home, dedicated console market, but it isn't clear the "crossover" market works.

What problem are you actually solving here for consumers? Unless you are doing that, all you are doing is doing what too often happens and leads to bombed products like the PCjr -- solving your own problems at the expense of your customers. That's not an easy sell -- it usually fails miserably.

Maybe such people are out there, but I'm having trouble imagining how many people would really significantly compromise the form factor of their smartphone, which they carry with them all the time and use for many different purposes, so that it's better at playing a small library of relatively expensive games of which they will only ever own a handful. Maybe I'm just not understanding the target market here, but personally if I really wanted to play Nintendo's games on a portable system, I'd be much more wiling to buy a ~$150 dedicated Nintendo gaming device in addition to my smartphone than to replace my preferred smartphone model with a phone from a game console company.

The value proposition for the consumer is the ability to play high-quality Nintendo exclusives on their Android smartphone with physical controls. This saves them the bother of carrying a separate device. In addition a high-end 2013 smartphone will have much more processing power and a better screen than the 3DS. Other smartphone features like the touchscreen and online connectivity could also be put to use for gaming. So Nintendo could create the best ever mobile experience for its games.

Consumers would be paying roughly the same price as other high-end Android phones. How much does a physical controller add to the cost? $30 ? Nintendo could easily absorb that in its margin since it will be selling software. I doubt consumers would mind too much if it passed that amount onto them anyway.The main tradeoff would be bulk but even that would not be excessive. Recently announced phones like the ZTE Nubia pack absurdly high specs into 7-8 mm phones; I am sure Nintendo could manage a gaming phone at a perfectly reasonable 12 mm.

I don't think the Xperia Play example is that discouraging. It was perhaps a year or two early. The gaming pad was actually pretty good but much of the hardware was mediocre: the CPU, GPU and screen for example. Hardware has progressed quickly since then and pretty much any high-end smartphone today can deliver a terrific gaming experience. Plus I think Nintendo has more cachet in mobile gaming than Sony. Announcing a phone with 3-4 Nintendo launch titles would be huge.

How big would the market for such a phone be? Nobody knows but the DS sold 150 million units and I don't think it's crazy to suggest that a Nintendo phone could sell one third of that number over a couple of years.

I know that in my household we would buy 3 Nintendo phones just for games like Nintendo's Luigi's Mansion, Zelda Spirit Tracks, Sonic Racing, and Mario Kart.

Besides my own kids and myself, I know dozens of kids where Kirby, Mario, Zelda, and Link are more powerful than Angry Birds or Plants vs Zombies.

So long as I have access to a WebKit browser and stock Android apps even I would switch from iOS to an Android phone if I could play Nintendo games.

What does any of that have to do with the viability of a Nintendo phone? It's whether your desires also match with enough people to produce a sustainable business for the product; the NGage and Xperia Play suggest that customers don't give a shit.

Also "my family and I would by that" is a pretty lousy justification for the launch of a global product that will cost hundreds of millions to develop and market, especially when similar products in that class have been a complete failure.

There are hundreds of millions of DS owners willing to upgrade to the next Nintendo handheld. Shove a phone into a 3DS and they could probably sell 20m next year. There is a real established and dedicated market to Nintendo and their games.

I'm not sure how else to show this to you. I've linked to their annual 2012 HW and SW report multiple times now in multiple threads.

Why is it that Maester gets this but ZnU and ZZ doesn't? What is so exotic about a 12mm slider dual screen plus stylus DS phone that Nintendo couldn't pull it off?

Because its a bad idea. Fhat am I doing with this phone when I'm not playing games, now I'm suffering through a useless dual screen and dedicated controls that serve no point. So the unique aspects of the phone are a hindrance when you're not engaged in the only activity all of that extra functionality is being built for. Why would I want a phone with features that are in my way when I'm not playing games?

Also, I doubt Nintendo would be able to sustain the prices they currently charge for games.

Why is it that Maester gets this but ZnU and ZZ doesn't? What is so exotic about a 12mm slider dual screen plus stylus DS phone that Nintendo couldn't pull it off?

I didn't say they couldn't bring such a product to market. The issue I'm having trouble with is that if smartphones are important to people on their own terms, I question whether people would be willing to compromise what they like about their current preferred smartphone to get something that's a somewhat better mobile gaming system. Because that's what we're talking about here. Realistically, any smartphone produced by Nintendo would be inferior to the best competing smartphones on the market when disregarding its gaming features — it's implausible that Nintendo would be as good at the non-gaming aspects of a smartphone as Apple or Samsung.

But maybe smartphones aren't important to most people on their own terms. Some apparent buying patterns in the Android world do suggest this.

There are hundreds of millions of DS owners willing to upgrade to the next Nintendo handheld. Shove a phone into a 3DS and they could probably sell 20m next year. There is a real established and dedicated market to Nintendo and their games.

I'm not sure how else to show this to you. I've linked to their annual 2012 HW and SW report multiple times now in multiple threads.

But as I responded in those threads, that doesn't translate necessarily to sales. How much has the Playstation's extremely strong brand and game catalogue help the Xperia Play? How much is it helping the Vita? Both of those devices have one of the strongest gaming brands in the industry behind it, and in both cases customers don't give a shit.

There are hundreds of millions of DS owners willing to upgrade to the next Nintendo handheld. Shove a phone into a 3DS and they could probably sell 20m next year. There is a real established and dedicated market to Nintendo and their games.

I'm not sure how else to show this to you. I've linked to their annual 2012 HW and SW report multiple times now in multiple threads.

But as I responded in those threads, that doesn't translate necessarily to sales. How much has the Playstation's extremely strong brand and game catalogue help the Xperia Play? How much is it helping the Vita? Both of those devices have one of the strongest gaming brands in the industry behind it, and in both cases customers don't give a shit.

Hahaha! The Playstation brand hasn't been strong for a long time, and the Xperia Play has a distinctly unstrong game catalogue without any kind of big name properties. There are only 30 games on that list and no God of War, no Gears of War, no Metal Gears, no Call of Duty, etc.

You can't seriously use games as a selling point if you don't have the games.

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A strong line up of games isn't enough for this to work necessarily.

Of course it is, you just haven't seen a strong line of games yet, and the 3DS was noted for having a weak lineup, yet ended 2012 with 93 downloadable titles and over 168 available games.

Sony is the wrong company to hold up as an example except as a failure.

I know that in my household we would buy 3 Nintendo phones just for games like Nintendo's Luigi's Mansion, Zelda Spirit Tracks, Sonic Racing, and Mario Kart.

Besides my own kids and myself, I know dozens of kids where Kirby, Mario, Zelda, and Link are more powerful than Angry Birds or Plants vs Zombies.

So long as I have access to a WebKit browser and stock Android apps even I would switch from iOS to an Android phone if I could play Nintendo games.

I can assure you that you are a minority here. People aren't going to give up iOS for a Nintendphone, nor will tons of Android users. If they are the "cheap" ones we hear about, that won't work as the Nintendphone would be expensive I would think. Then you have high end Android phones--Would people give up their S3 or Note 2 for a Nintendo phone that likely is not as good?

It just doesn't pass the sniff test. Oh--and what about the whole dual screen thing they seem to have settled on? Does that go away? It is just a bad idea.

Maybe such people are out there, but I'm having trouble imagining how many people would really significantly compromise the form factor of their smartphone, which they carry with them all the time and use for many different purposes, so that it's better at playing a small library of relatively expensive games of which they will only ever own a handful. Maybe I'm just not understanding the target market here, but personally if I really wanted to play Nintendo's games on a portable system, I'd be much more wiling to buy a ~$150 dedicated Nintendo gaming device in addition to my smartphone than to replace my preferred smartphone model with a phone from a game console company.

Not only that, but OC is ignoring that a HUGE portion of Nintendo's handhelds are sold to kids (or rather sold to parents for the intention of giving to their kids). The point is that it is KIDS who have a huge huge portion of Nintendo handhelds. They have to be cheap because the kids break them (a nice percentage of DS/3DS sales are for replacements), so not a $600 phone.

Why is it that Maester gets this but ZnU and ZZ doesn't? What is so exotic about a 12mm slider dual screen plus stylus DS phone that Nintendo couldn't pull it off?

Because sales would be low. It is a bad business decision. Why is that YOU don't get this? It is ignoring cost of a 3DS, the target market (kids), the low likelihood of tons of people giving up an iPhone or Android phone for it, paying that much for games, etc. etc. It is just a bad decision and would hurt Nintendo even more.

There are hundreds of millions of DS owners willing to upgrade to the next Nintendo handheld. Shove a phone into a 3DS and they could probably sell 20m next year. There is a real established and dedicated market to Nintendo and their games.

I'm not sure how else to show this to you. I've linked to their annual 2012 HW and SW report multiple times now in multiple threads.

No there are not hundreds of millions of DS owners willing to upgrade. First off, maybe 150mil (that is total sold, but unique users are lower than that). A huge portion are kids who would NOT be getting a phone instead. You are proposing that instead of buying a $150-200 gaming device for a kid, that the parent buy a $600 phone. That just doesn't work. The parents for themselves? Why gimp the phone portion to get the games? Plus giving up their iPhone? Doubtful. In a pull of loyalty, apple wins against Nintendo. Furthermore, they would be competinging against their own handheld (3DS) and either taking sales from it, or at best fragmenting it.

If the Nexus 4 is $299, and the 3DS debuted at $249, why do you envision a 3DS phone to be $600?

Furthermore, why shouldn't it be a dual screen slider?

So imagine a $299 3DS available free on contract, a dual screen slider that works as a Wii U GamePad in a pinch or a standard DS or 3DS, compatible with the hundreds of eShop titles already online, and has Android 4.2 and apps as well as the ability to message on the Nintendo Network.

I would use it, I would get one for my daughter as her first phone, and I know my son would steal it to play Mario Kart, Smash Bros, and Sonic.

If the Nexus 4 is $299, and the 3DS debuted at $249, why do you envision a 3DS phone to be $600?

Furthermore, why shouldn't it be a dual screen slider?

So imagine a $299 3DS available free on contract, a dual screen slider that works as a Wii U GamePad in a pinch or a standard DS or 3DS, compatible with the hundreds of eShop titles already online, and has Android 4.2 and apps as well as the ability to message on the Nintendo Network.

I would use it, I would get one for my daughter as her first phone, and I know my son would steal it to play Mario Kart, Smash Bros, and Sonic.

Because of several things:

1) The Nexus 4 is unique. Why is the S3 $600 if the Nexus 4 is $300? Same for every other high-end Android phone. 2) The 3DS BOMBED at $249.3) Yes, we know you would use it and get it for one of your kids. But you are NOT that common. You are actually unusual.

BTW--it doesn't have to be a dual screen...except then it wouldn't be compatible with all those DS and 3DS titles. So it would be a new platform. Great--they would have TWO competing handheld platforms at the same time. That is a BAD idea.

And yes, you can IMAGINE that ($299, etc.). Imagine if the S4 is $250 off contract! Imagine if the Note 3 is $299 off contract. Just IMAGINE.

Or you could be more pragmatic and realize that it is nearly impossible that what you imagine would be what was actually done.

Plus, you are ignoring about how they would lock it to their phone, how they would reduce piracy, etc. Using stock android means it would be cracked probably before it hit the market!

Nintendo phone would be at best niche. The days of $40 portable games for the mainstream are gone (that is the core of the console gaming business model, what are now expensive games). Only the diehards which can still be sizable in Japan, but still a niche globally, would bother.

Only people who'd be caught dead with a Nintendo phone with an integrated gamepad would be the people you see dress up for Comicons or going to Trekkie conventions every year.

I think the attention will now inevitably move to whether Samsung sticks with Android.

But, if you're correct, and I've thought along these lines for years, the likeliest outcome is a Wintel style situation for Sammy and Google. People generally do not mess with reliable cash cows. I don't think changing OSes is like changing socks, even in this market.

Agreed. Although a difference between Samsung-Google and Microsoft-Intel is the vast imbalance in profits received between the two. I mean, Samsung is basically reaping what Google has sown. If there's ever a spark that brings that alliance down, it'll be that.

I think a question remains whether Microsoft's very solid position in enterprise + Metro's cross-device endgame (when it happens) will keep them relevant, despite the dismal performance of WP (and W8/RT in the tablet space) so far. I think it will, but my impression in Microsoft's strength grows weaker every year.

By what metric is the Playstation brand weak? And you what of the Vita? It has had the benefit of Uncharted, CoD, God of War, and more... and it has amounted to nothing.

Isn't that kind of the point? The market for standalone hand-helds is just not that big anywmore not matter how strong the brand. That's why Nintendo and Sony need to move to smartphones. IOW you need to combine a strong gaming brand like Nintendo or Playstation with smartphone hardware.

Again the Xperia Play experience doesn't prove much. The hardware was average in ways that undermine the gaming experience: CPU, GPU and screen. The titles were mediocre. Sony didn't even allow the Playstation brand to be used. Both Nintendo and Sony can do a lot better in 2013.

A few other points: The age at which kids get smartphones seems to be falling. I know 13 year olds with expensive smartphones. This trend obviously increases the potential market for a Nintendo phone while simultaneously cutting into the market for their handhelds.

I don't think the downside risk is particularly high. What are the fixed costs of designing and marketing a single smartphone. 200 million? 300 million? Nintendo could plausibly break even with sales of a few million.

It's not Nintendo, but Nvidia have announced Project Shield which is a weird Tegra 4 equipped console/controller running "Pure Android" — at least somebody gets it — for playing games that run on the device, or are streamed from cloud services that run on Nvidia hardware.

It's not Nintendo, but Nvidia have announced Project Shield which is a weird Tegra 4 equipped console/controller running "Pure Android" — at least somebody gets it — for playing games that run on the device, or are streamed from cloud services that run on Nvidia hardware.

I'm thinking of getting one and a GTX 780 when it comes out, it could be the perfect solution to my living room gaming needs!

By what metric is the Playstation brand weak? And you what of the Vita? It has had the benefit of Uncharted, CoD, God of War, and more... and it has amounted to nothing.

Isn't that kind of the point? The market for standalone hand-helds is just not that big anywmore not matter how strong the brand. That's why Nintendo and Sony need to move to smartphones. IOW you need to combine a strong gaming brand like Nintendo or Playstation with smartphone hardware.

Again the Xperia Play experience doesn't prove much. The hardware was average in ways that undermine the gaming experience: CPU, GPU and screen. The titles were mediocre. Sony didn't even allow the Playstation brand to be used. Both Nintendo and Sony can do a lot better in 2013.

My question was with regard to the Vita, not the Xperia Play. The Vita has been given competitive specs, a catalogue of titles from AAA brands like CoD and Uncharted, it has a great screen, excellent build quality... and it has amounted to nothing. Customers aren't buying it because there is no need in the market for the thing, as people feel the gaming experience they're getting from their smartphones is adequate enough. Nintendo can develop a phone, but there no previous evidence that the market will accept one with dedicated gaming hardware controls. Just because it hasn't ever happened doesn't mean it can't, but I don't much like Nintendo's odds on a product like this myself. It just seems so pie in the sky to me.

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A few other points: The age at which kids get smartphones seems to be falling. I know 13 year olds with expensive smartphones. This trend obviously increases the potential market for a Nintendo phone while simultaneously cutting into the market for their handhelds.

iPod touches are given to young children who want the functionality of a smartphone, but when the parents don't want to incur the high cost of a contract (or if the kids are just too young for a phone). This is a market segment that's already being filed, I don't see where there is opportunity for Nintendo there.